Spring RTS Engine

Okay, for those of you who are knowledgeable and enjoy this sort of thing.

You have $1000. Build the best gaming computer you can. Don't take shipping or tax into account.

Basically, I'm thinking about getting a desktop for gaming, since this laptop thing isn't working out.

I don't know how much $1000 is, but I do know that despite the exchange rate, for pc buying purposes, £1 = $1 pretty much.

here's my setup:

graphics: geforce 7600GT

ram: 2 x 512mb of ddr2. it's important to get 2 chips 'cos DDR2 can access both at the same time

CPU: the sweetass intel pentium d 805. I have personally overclocked it to 3.5 ghz with the stock cooling.

PSU + CASE: whatever. some good case with at least 500watts PSU

Motherboard: asus p5wd2 premium

hdd: western digital sata 2 drive, 250 MB

duncs wrote:I don't know how much $1000 is, but I do know that despite the exchange rate, for pc buying purposes, £1 = $1 pretty much.

here's my setup:

graphics: geforce 7600GT

ram: 2 x 512mb of ddr2. it's important to get 2 chips 'cos DDR2 can access both at the same time

CPU: the sweetass intel pentium d 805. I have personally overclocked it to 3.5 ghz with the stock cooling.

PSU + CASE: whatever. some good case with at least 500watts PSU

Motherboard: asus p5wd2 premium

hdd: western digital sata 2 drive, 250 MB

ummm....$1 is NOT £1....$1000~£550...but including tax $1000 is probably the equivilent to £650

Yes, but $1000 ~ £1000 considering the UKs high electronic pricing.

But doesn't ordering online cancel some of that out?

Aun wrote:Yes, but $1000 ~ £1000 considering the UKs high electronic pricing.

uh..huh... and thats why if i quickly do a search on the internet comparing two identical processors the conversion rate works out perfectly? if anything better than my estimates?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6819103546
http://ebuyer.com/UK/product/91327/rb/20606732543

Computer components are weird, some have adjusted pricing for each region while others are direct conversions and don't even add VAT on top.

One thousand dollars is quite a lot. If you reuse old components (especially the case and drives) that'll buy a great graphic card (*800 GT/Ultra or *900), a shitload of RAM (2GB in two 1GB sticks for dual channel operation?), a good CPU and a quality mobo. You can get a top-end gaming rig for that kind of money provided you just replace the performance-related guts rather than throwing everything out and buying stuff anew that your old computer could have "donated".

I pay someone else to build me a good computer.

Just make sure your "donated" power supply can hack it, otherwise yes, gut old computers for the win.

And if you don't have an old computer to gut, try cruising the local school district. Schools (Private/University, not so much Public) throw out computers that are only mildly obsolete sometimes, and you can grab a case and power supply for cheap-as-free that way.

(Sometimes you can even get RAM that's worth re-using, but I wouldn't expect anything worthy of a gaming rig.)

It's about 2 months to early to buy a new PC right now. When conroe core chips hit the market all the current AMD and Pentium prices will drop like rocks to remain competitively priced. You will end up being able to get alot more for your money if you wait a short while.

But then when DX10 comes out, you'll have to upgrade again...

Lindir The Green wrote:But then when DX10 comes out, you'll have to upgrade again...

Nah, DX10 is still 6 months till release at least, and it won't signifigantly cause a price drop because it will be adopted much more gradually then conroe is forcing the processor market to adapt. You need to understand, intel in a single day obsoleted the entire processor market that stood strong the day before it. The current chips are speculated to literally half in price, and conroe's preformance per dollar if you choose to go with one of those chips is still better. I paid about $450 for a 3 gig single core pentium a few years ago, the $185 conroe core is twice as powerful as my chip.

I frequent the PCgamer forums and they have a computer sticky

PSU: ENERMAX Whisper II EG565P-VE FMA(24P) ATX12V 535W $90
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6817103512

Mobo: ASUS M2N-SLI Deluxe AM2 NVIDIA nForce 570 SLI MCP ATX $149
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813131013

Vid Card: eVGA Geforce 7900GT CO 256/256 PCI-E x16 $270 - $30 = $240
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814130281

CPU: AMD Athlon 64 3800+ Orleans 512KB L2 Cache Socket AM2 $142
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6819103631

Ram: OCZ 1GB (2 x 512MB) 240-Pin DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Kit $110
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820227119

Hard Drive: Maxtor DiamondMax 10 160GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s $70
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822144011

Optical: LG Black DVD Burner ├óÔé¼ÔÇ£ OEM $38
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6827136085

Sound: onboard

OS: Microsoft Windows XP Home With SP2 ├óÔé¼ÔÇ£ OEM $85
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6837102059

TOTAL: $924

It is all bought from newegg.com. Seems to be a decent system.

If you upgrade you won't have to buy the writer or the HDD again. Also onboard sound is a big ressource hog, get a cheapass sound card and you'll reduce your CPU load by ~10%.

HDD impacts the performance quite a lot, so changing is neccessary, for newer HDD's are much faster.

Furthermore, using a sound card may decrease the CPU load by 5%, but when using dual core CPU's and taking into account that most games (like; all) can't use the dual cores atm, this advantage fades, for the sound process can use the other core, not used by the CPU.

Next, current games' performance is hardly bothered by the CPU, more by grafix card etc.

I'd absolutely get a Core 2 Duo, even if it means waiting. That CPU is the best thing since the original athlon

dont get a core 2 duo, instead wait.

At the end of the year in december Intel are releasing another set of cpu's that make core 2 duo obsolete and utterly pointless. *think core 2 quattro*.

actually due to the severely limited bandwidth of the fsb the new chips (2 dual core processors on 1 die pentium d like) the performance will be degraded under gaming (high bandwidth) conditions like it was with hyper threading.

AF wrote:dont get a core 2 duo, instead wait.

At the end of the year in december Intel are releasing another set of cpu's that make core 2 duo obsolete and utterly pointless. *think core 2 quattro*.

The quad cores will be mostly for enthusiasts and servers. They won't significantly change the face of CPU pricing and performance.

Mugslugs wrote:actually due to the severely limited bandwidth of the fsb the new chips (2 dual core processors on 1 die pentium d like) the performance will be degraded under gaming (high bandwidth) conditions like it was with hyper threading.

hm, I don't know. even if it is 'limited', it's still really really fast

The Core 2 Duo E6700 for example outperforms the Athlon 64 X2 5000+ in literally every single test, especially in game benchmarks.